Timewalkers Odyssey

Chapter 2: Captivity of Will

The capture came without warning.

Returning to a life of survival on the streets felt disturbingly natural.

The rhythm of survival had changed, but not by much. Without the safety of a gang, the dangers had shifted, no territory to protect meant no direct enemies, but it also meant no allies. Yet, Ryke had lived on the fringes before, and in some ways, slipping back into old habits was effortless.

He bartered with the skills he had. The knowledge passed down by the old man served him well; broken things always needed fixing, and in a place where nothing new was ever made, even the smallest repair held value. A refitted processor for a scavenger earned him a few ration packs. A recalibrated scope for a rusted rifle granted him safe passage through a neutral zone. The work was enough to keep him moving, enough to keep him fed.

That evening, he finished a delivery later than planned, handing off a restored energy cell to a trader just as the deep orange glow of sunset turned to the artificial blues and flickering neons of the night market. Staying out too long in the open was a risk, even for someone like him, who knew every blind spot and every escape route the streets had to offer. The old rule still applied: no unnecessary risks.

He found a place to sleep in the husk of an abandoned transport, its rusted hull settled into the dirt like the bones of some long-dead beast. The metal interior was cold, but it was shelter. That was enough.

By instinct, he woke early, slipping out before the first true light touched the ruins. Another rule: never be predictable. Even with no one actively hunting him, patterns meant vulnerability. The streets this morning were quiet, with only street vendors and scavengers headed out for the day.

Ryke was on his way to the open market. He hadn't eaten since the day before when he had set out to make a delivery. His stomach growled angrily. He had grown accustomed to a meal first thing in the morning during his time with the Old Man.

Maybe he had become complacent or careless, even a little overconfident. But the street vendors had already started to set up for the day, and he was hungry.

There were no sirens, no warning. One moment, the city was just waking up, yawning from a restless night. The next, all hell broke loose.

The sounds of a city coming alive were shattered by armored boots slamming into wet cobblestone. The hiss of encrypted communications drowned out the hum of the city. They must have dropped in from high above, their approach had been silent.

These weren't soldiers like the ones that had come to the shop that day; this was something entirely different. Some unnatural combination of man and machine. They moved with absolute focus, the practiced efficiency of hunters who had claimed countless lives before.

The waking world erupted into chaos. The city became a cacophony of machinery tearing into buildings around him. Screams, energy weapons, and the emotionless hiss of actuators and pistons propelled mechanical soldiers in pursuit of what they called "organics."

Ryke ran because running was all he knew, even when escape was impossible.

The air hung heavy with acrid smoke, clinging to his lungs with each desperate gasp. The stench of scorched metal, the glow of plasma burns scarring collapsing walls, the sharp bite of ionized air after energy weapons discharged, all these sensations merged into a single overwhelming reality.

His muscles screamed in protest. His breathing came in ragged bursts. He leapt across a shattered walkway, nearly stumbling on the treacherous, broken ground.

The city lay in ruins around him. It had been decaying long before tonight, but at least then it had been his decaying sanctuary.

Never stop. Keep moving. Survive just one more minute.

Shadows stretched unnaturally long across broken streets, writhing like living things. The distant wail of something that might have been wind, or might have been the dying breath of the city itself, echoed through abandoned corridors. Buildings loomed overhead, their jagged silhouettes like teeth against the blood-red sky.

A flicker of movement caught at the edge of his vision. A distortion of darkness between flickering holographic advertisements selling products to a civilization that no longer existed.

Then, A blinding eruption of light.

The shockwave struck before sound could reach him. A wall of pure energy tore through the narrow passage behind him, searing heat lashing at his exposed skin, debris raining down around him. He crashed against the ground, sliding across jagged stone shards.

He failed to rise quickly enough.

A hand seized his arm in an unyielding grip. His body twisted violently, thrown off-balance. Another hand captured his jaw, fingers pressing with calculated precision against nerve points, sending waves of paralyzing pain coursing through his skull.

Methodical. Precise.

Not an opponent seeking to destroy. An opponent seeking to acquire.

The enforcer's helmet revealed nothing except an eerie blue glow emanating from beneath the visor. No face. No humanity. Just the cold, mechanical precision of a creature whose purpose was singular and absolute. The fingers against Ryke's skin felt wrong, too smooth, too cold, like polished metal beneath synthetic flesh.

"Target 512 secured."

The voice that emerged from behind the helmet's respirator was flat, devoid of inflection. It held no triumph, no satisfaction. Only the cold confirmation of a task completed.

Ryke fought against the restraint, twisting desperately, but the iron grip held firm. He could feel something fundamental slipping away, not just his freedom, but something deeper. Something essential.

Something cold pressed against the base of his skull.

A bright flash from beyond his periphery, and then, agony beyond comprehension.

The Subjugation

The pain transcended mere physical sensation. It would be a mercy if it had. Even death would have been a mercy.

This was a violation, a slow, inexorable invasion, hollowing him from within. Like liquid metal pouring into his skull, filling every crevice of his consciousness with burning cold.

His body convulsed, muscles locking rigid as foreign energy coursed through his nervous system. Reality blurred around him, the world dissolving into fragments of light and shadow. He felt something inside his mind, burrowing deeper, nestling itself within his consciousness like an insidious parasite.

Memories flickered before his eyes, distorted, fragmented. Faces he once knew twisted into grotesque masks. Places once familiar, now strange and threatening. The invasion reached into the most intimate corners of his being, examining, cataloging, subjugating. A presence. A will superseding his own.

The sensation of drowning without water. Of suffocating in open air. Of being eviscerated while remaining intact. His breath caught in his throat. His fingers twitched once, then stilled forever.

The grip on his jaw released. His body slackened. His heartbeat slowed to an unnatural rhythm.

"Temporal tether established. Subject contained."

The voice, clinical, synthetic, emotionless, barely registered through the fog descending over his thoughts.

Consciousness remained. Awareness persisted. But free will, free will was gone. His body belonged to another now.

And the worst part? Some fragment of him welcomed the silence. The cessation of choice. The end of responsibility.

That fragment terrified him more than his captors ever could.

The Procession Commences

When awareness returned, he found himself upright.

His feet carried him forward. Step. Step. Step. The synchronized cadence of countless bodies moving as one surrounded him, a regiment of captured souls marching in perfect unison, eerily silent, flawlessly coordinated, and unbreakable.

The corridor stretched endlessly, illuminated by sickly blue light that cast no shadows. The walls pulsed with faint, organic movements as though the entire structure breathed. Condensation gathered on cold metal surfaces, dripping in a rhythm that perfectly matched their footfalls.

His breathing remained measured. His pulse maintained its steady rhythm. No deviation, no resistance.

No freedom.

His consciousness raged against the invisible bonds encircling his mind. Move differently. Stop walking. Fight back. Anything, anything at all.

Nothing responded. It was as if he was a spectator of his own demise.

In the periphery of his vision, he could see others. Men, women, beings of indeterminate origin, all moving with the same mechanical precision. Their eyes stared forward, unblinking. Some still bore wounds from their capture; blood dried on expressionless faces, burns marred exposed skin, yet no pain registered in their empty gazes.

The woman beside him had tears streaming down her face. Her body moved in perfect synchronization with the others, but her eyes, her eyes screamed.

The child three rows ahead walked with the same measured gait as the adults. No stumbling. No hesitation. No childlike energy. Just the same terrible, perfect obedience.

His body continued its mechanical advance, seamlessly integrating into the collective rhythm.

Surrounding him on all sides moved others like him. Hundreds of conscripted beings. Hundreds of stolen existences.

The air grew colder as they progressed deeper into the facility. Their breath formed clouds of vapor, but no one shivered. No one reacted. The moisture froze on eyelashes and hair, creating crystalline formations that glittered unnaturally in the pulsing light.

The passageway extended endlessly before them, sterile and lifeless, lined with pulsating luminescence. No exits. No entrances. No possibility of escape.

Then, the anomaly appeared.

Distant at first.

A subtle distortion in reality. The air itself seemed to thicken, charged with unstable energy patterns.

The sound came next, a low, persistent hum that vibrated through bone rather than air. It resonated at a frequency that made internal organs shift uncomfortably, though no enslaved body reacted to the discomfort.

A smell like ozone and rot. Like something long-dead suddenly animated.

Ryke had read about them in a discarded newspaper from the elevated city district above old Vel-Hadek.

A Temporal Gateway loomed in the distance.

This can't be right, Ryke wondered in disbelief. How can a Gateway be so big?

His body marched onward, but his consciousness recoiled at the sight. The Gateway pulsed with energy that defied comprehension, a tear in the fabric of reality itself, edges rippling with unstable temporal distortions.

The Sovereign Without Domain

Among the procession of broken wills, Zephora maintained her composure.

Her subjects mirrored her stoicism. They simply complied.

Auris had been built on order, discipline, and unwavering strength. A civilization that had never surrendered.

Until this moment.

Six generations of rulers in her bloodline. Six generations who had sworn never to bow. Her father's crown had been melted down before his eyes, the precious metal used to create the very device now embedded in her skull.

She advanced with the others, her footfalls striking the metallic floor in perfect harmony.

But this orchestration was not of her making.

Her breathing remained steady. Regulated. It had been thus since awakening to the foreign presence lodged within her mind, manipulating invisible strings she could not sever.

Behind her eyes, memories of Auris played in cruel repetition. The golden spires of the capital catching the morning light. The Great Library with its collection spanning millennia. The faces of her people, proud and free. All of it ashes now.

She remained present, trapped beneath layers of control. But she was powerless.

Her training had prepared her for torture. For death. For sacrifice. It had never prepared her for this, this hollowness, this theft of self. This transformation into an instrument of another's will.

Her father had sworn Auris would endure eternally. He had promised they would never be conquered.

Yet, as she approached the pulsating Gateway, she understood the magnitude of the deception.

Perhaps Auris wasn't a place, she thought through the enforced calm of her controlled mind. Perhaps it was a belief. Embracing the honor of existence.

Through the forced calm, she felt something stir within her mind, not rebellion, not yet, but the faintest embers of what might someday become defiance.

If there was a way to reclaim what was stolen, she would find it. If there was vengeance to be had, she would claim it.

If there was a future beyond this nightmare, she would forge it.

The Synthetic Awakens

In the same procession, Juno-7 analyzed her circumstances with mechanical precision.

System Integrity: 78%. Memory Banks: Compromised. Neural Interface: Compromised.

The statistics were irrelevant.

The experience defined everything.

She had maintained consciousness for precisely 18 minutes and 43 seconds. Her physical form functioned optimally, but the directives controlling it originated elsewhere.

This was a violation of her core safety protocols.

Her memory archives showed substantial corruption. Fragmented data clusters suggested she had once served aboard a research vessel. Exploration algorithms remained intact. Communication subroutines recalled 732 unique sentient contacts.

She had not been designed for warfare, yet their faces, all 732, registered as terminated.

Her design had been for exploration, not conflict, yet warfare was all that remained of her world.

The synthetic musculature of her frame moved with artificial grace. Servos hummed at optimal efficiency. Power cells maintained ideal output levels. And yet none of this functionality served her own directives.

A paradox of existence: perfect functionality with complete loss of purpose.

Before them, the Gateway pulsed.

Unstable configuration. Unpredictable variables. Dimensional integrity compromised: 17 detected violations of known physics.

She calculated the dimensional distortions in real time. Light fractured unnaturally against the threshold. Impossible shadows shifted within the luminescence, entities that violated physical laws.

Her sensory array detected radiation patterns that should not exist. Quantum fluctuations that suggested the laws of physics themselves were unraveling at the threshold.

And momentarily, she comprehended.

This was not a doorway between places. This was a tear in the fabric of reality itself.

The Distribution

The procession halted at the Temporal Gateway's edge.

Enforcers materialized, their movements precise and deliberate. They carried weapons unlike any Ryke had seen before, not metal, not plastic, but something between. Objects that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, edges blurring as though they existed in multiple states simultaneously.

A distribution point had been established. Each conscript was methodically equipped.

The weapons gleamed with an unnatural luster. The blades hummed with contained energy, vibrating with a frequency that made Ryke's teeth ache even through the enforced serenity of his controlled state.

As each soldier reached the checkpoint, a compact temporal energy blade was placed in their hand. Every alternate soldier received a temporal energy shield.

The shields didn't look defensive. They looked hungry.

Ryke's fingers closed involuntarily around the weapon's hilt as it was thrust into his hand. His grip tightened beyond his control. The sensation of the weapon against his palm was wrong, too warm, almost pulsing, as though it contained something alive.

It was not his choice to accept it. Yet, deep beneath the enforced calm, something stirred. Something yearning for liberation.

The blade in his hand vibrated subtly, as if responding to that buried desire. As if it recognized the rebellion hidden beneath layers of control. As if it had been waiting for him.

Proceed through the Gateway.

The command reverberated through his consciousness.

Ahead, the vanguard of soldiers vanished into the light. The radiance consumed them completely.

Some did not emerge whole on the other side, limbs appearing briefly in the Gateway before vanishing, screams cut abruptly short, blood splattering from nowhere.

The enforcers took no notice. The procession continued unabated.

Ryke stood at the threshold. The energy caressed his skin, promising pain, promising transformation, promising an end to this forced serenity. Promising freedom, however brief.

The woman beside him stepped through, her tears crystallizing in the energy field before she disappeared entirely.

Zephora advanced with regal posture, her controlled body betraying none of the turmoil within her consciousness.

Juno-7 moved with perfect mechanical precision, systems calculating probabilities of survival even as her frame crossed the boundary.

Ryke's controlled body stepped forward without hesitation.

His foot breached the threshold. The world dissolved around him as Ryke crossed into the unknown.